By the catalyses both of a nitrogen-containing cyclic compound and of a transition metal compound (represented by cobalt or manganese), organic compounds are oxidized with molecular oxygen to give oxygen-containing organic compounds. In an exemplary known production process of this type, the transition metal compound is dissolved in a reaction solution when used (Patent Document 1). The transition metal compounds form a relatively large proportion of the production cost. A possible solution to reduce the production cost is reduction of the amount of the transition metal compounds, but the reduction of the amount causes problems such as a lower yield and is impractical.
A strong demand has therefore been made to recover and reuse transition metal compounds after use. However, it is generally difficult to recover such transition metal compounds dissolved in reaction solutions. A possible solution to easy recovery of a transition metal compound is allowing the transition metal compound to be supported on a support before use, and recovering the transition metal compound as being supported on the support after use. However, even when the support is recovered, the transition metal compound is not efficiently recovered, because the transition metal compound is dissolved out or eluted into the reaction solution during a reaction process between an organic compound and molecular oxygen. Accordingly, there has not yet been actually found a process for the production of an oxygen-containing organic compound by oxidizing an organic compound with molecular oxygen to give the oxygen-containing organic compound in a high yield, in which a transition metal compound used as a catalyst is easily recoverable and reusable.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2001-253838